In an environment where there mixedly exist access points (relay station) connected with a wired network and access points not connected with the wired network, a mesh network has been known as a system that sequentially forwards frames received from a terminal between the access points. In the mesh network, forwarding among the access points is carried out with the time difference so that a time to be taken until the forwarding to the access point is made depends on the number of hops from the access point connected with the wired network.
In order for the access point (relay station) to simultaneously receive frames from another access point and transmit frames to a terminal, a scheme has been proposed in which both a 2.4 GHz band and a 5 GHz band are used. This scheme needs to use two bands. There is no proposal regarding how to achieve forwarding in a case where the forwarding is made via more access points.
Considering a relay network involving a plurality of relay stations, efficient forwarding is desired to reduce latency across the whole system.